Don't They Know that this is a Horror Story?
by p for pseudonymous
Summary: They are mortals playing at immortality. Later, He finds only injury, the reminder that he his not invincible anymore. Drabble.


Disclaimer: It should be noted that this document is a work of fanfiction and therefore any recognizable characters, events, ect. do not belong to me.

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Don't They Know that this is a Horror Story?

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_There is a rumor of a love story whispered in dirty school halls, nothing more than sour words upon the tongues of liars. _

She spends her nights wide-awake and afraid to sleep, her tears nothing more than contrived water-drop fears, a prescription liquid. She looks up at the sky and shakes in the darkness that comes with no moon and stars too far away to soothe. But there is something hidden within her, something sharp, like that blade he keeps concealed within the sock of his boot.

He is merely a child that plays at being a man but can act a long charade. Each day he can taste the iron filings in his blood and wonders when it will be too much. But it's still just a game and he is still just a boy. Music beats hard in a blackness he knows only monsters reside within, a thrumming that replaces the steady beat of an absent heart; but, still, this is where he finds her.

They are lust in leather, legs hanging over a freeway bridge. They are dressed as rebels, convoluted in their ideals. Their passion heals in the way doctors can't: her bruised paper skin disguised by Technicolor paint and wide eyes, his body disarray like shattered glass and his wit just as sharp as. It aches for them to be so close, raw skin pressed against raw emotion, and yet neither has known anything so sweet.

Their affair is shaped by the emptiness in which they reside, a need with no purpose so that it becomes something terrible. But tell them so, why do they feel so alive? It is love—neither dares utter such a dangerous word—synonymous with destruction. There is no solace in such an answer and this whole town burns for it, their hands blackened by the smoldering ash. "Do you love the stars," she asks instead.

"Maybe once," he tells her. And when the sun comes up they are nothing more than vapor hanging upon the golden morning air.

Her eyes are too polluted with shadow clouds and memories to see the stars in them. Their breaths mix where their lips touch into something toxic. They are spitting poison that courses through their veins and burns as it pumps through their fast beating hearts. It corrodes their metallic souls and each of them wonders when this steady pumping of tainted blood will halt.

They are mortals playing at immortality. The reminder of a god hangs upon a silver chain at her throat and she wonders why she still wears it when it sears a brand upon her chest, burning hot and bright against each of their chests as their fever and fury compact within their bones. There is nothing to hold onto but each other and soon they will burn away to nothing but the last vestiges of forgotten life to be blown away in the wind.

"What about monsters," He asks then, in another night when the acid in their blood swells and seeps past their lips, stains their teeth. His fingers burn as they claw beneath the cold flesh of her skin.

What about fallen heroes?

She clutches at the charm and kisses him with her fingers curled into fists, bones of iron and steel. The kiss is a warning: you will not love after this. She sees nothing but blackness and fading crosses behind her eyelids and he wonders when he will ever see her swimming in golden sunlight. She is stuck in this world of dying stars and broken deities, all silver vapor like ghosts.

There is a divinity in their demise. He leaves just as he came, in a compression of solid night. She stands, the sunlight burning her in a way he never had, utterly still and wondering why she so hates this fallen serenity. And yet, still once more, she clasps her hands together and prays to a god that she does not believe in that she will never have to see him again, standing only to pick the gravel from her knees like the last broken shards of their identity.

He does not turn around and she does not watch for him to, but that's okay, neither is quite the type. His car is just another set of taillights to drive beneath the highway's bridge, scarlet pulsing blood, broken crumbling rocks slipping beneath her feet. Later, He finds only injury, the reminder that he his not invincible anymore.

_Don't they know that this is a horror story?_


End file.
